It’s early November 1984 in Abilene, Texas. I’m 7 years old and just coming down from the excitement that Halloween dished out just days before. I had a store-bought costume, straight from the aisles of K-Mart. It was a princess of some sort. The long white polyester dress came with a plastic white mask and accompanying elastic headband to keep it in place. It was the face of a princess with blonde hair and a crown, and hollowed out eyes and nostril holes for breathability and trick-or-treating ease. And of course it was flame retardant because it was the early 80’s and we had evolved. I continued to play with…

There have been so many moments as a parent that I have to sit back and laugh at the irony of it all. While I’m steadily approaching middle age and somehow can’t ever remember where I put my car keys, I can still remember my teen years in vivid detail. Those years of friendships, experiences, and trends are tightly woven together in my memory. We were not much different from the teens of today. For decades, each generation of teens has adopted their own language that seems to be indecipherable to the common outsider. Not unlike remote tribal communities. Or an angry toddler. I distinctly remember moms in our generation…